


soon

by thesilverarrow



Category: Criminal Minds
Genre: F/M, see note for warnings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-09-05
Updated: 2014-09-05
Packaged: 2018-02-16 05:03:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,878
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2256846
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thesilverarrow/pseuds/thesilverarrow
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>"Did you know that movies are exactly the same in French as in English when you turn the sound off?" It sounds stupid after she says it. To his credit, he doesn't so much as smirk.</i>
</p>
            </blockquote>





	soon

**Author's Note:**

> Takes place a shortish time after 7.2 "Proof."  
> References to canon character "death" and past drug abuse.

He opens door at 2:57 a.m. without a gun in his hand. She likes that about him, that he will probably never be as paranoid and defensive as she is, even after all their team has been through. Still, he's got his own walls, and their fragile new reconciliation makes them all the more obvious.

It's generally smiles between them now, most days, but that's somehow worse, as smiles can be sincerely meant but still somehow insincere. Fortunately, he seems too tired right now to fake much of anything -- or to mince words, so she doesn't let him get in the first one.

"Did you know that movies are exactly the same in French as in English when you turn the sound off?"

It sounds stupid after she says it. To his credit, he doesn't so much as smirk.

"One would assume so," he replies, and his sleep-rough voice catches, so he coughs. He's in blue plaid flannel pajama pants and a black t-shirt, and he crosses his arms self-protectively.

So she says: " _Casablanca_ is on."

He frowns at her, one of those confused expressions he makes when he's clearly trying to make sense of the messy art of human interaction. She's relieved when he quickly stops trying to do what he thinks he's supposed to and just reacts.

"You're coming in, aren't you?" he says. He's looking at a spot on the carpet between them.

"I miss you," she says.

Shaking his head as if to clear away the sentiment without negating the fact, he then sweeps out of the doorway and gives her a bit of a mock bow, ushering her into his living room.

It's pretty much like she remembers – except, like everything in her new old life, it somehow seems smaller. She notices things she didn't before. The brass of the table lamps. How a whole range of shelves has nothing but mathematics texts. Of course, there's also a new print on the wall, some expressionist painter she would've been sure he hated.

He says, "When you were…" Remote in hand, he makes a vague gesture.

France.

"…did you still turn up the sound for 'La Marseillaise'?"

"What do you think?" she replies, unable to keep her face from cracking into a weary smile. It's a ghost of what it might have been, but it's enough -- because he smiles too.

*

Pulling his feet up onto the couch, he sits hunched over, his arms draped over his knees. He stares intently at the small screen, as though he doesn’t know the movie well enough to quote the dialogue word for word, eidetic memory or not.

This is not how this works. It's too fucking quiet. First of all, actually trying to watch a movie without the sound kind of sucks. She'd never thought about just how much they tended to talk during those random, late-night movie marathons, whether they were nested in on opposite ends of one or the other's couch or simply chatting on speakerphone from one side of the city to the other. And then there's how a quiet Reid always makes her nervous, mainly because his mind is never quiet.

So she listens to the refrigerator whirring in and out of cycle and the air conditioning's steady white noise. She listens to the clock on the wall tick incessantly, never quite in time with her heartbeat. And there it is, the third thing that makes this so very wrong: she's pretty sure she never felt precisely this nervous around him, half-desperate for physical contact and half scared of it, too.

Peter Lorre is just coming on screen when she says, abruptly, "I called J. J. one time during those months. Just one."

He doesn't reply or look at her, but by the expression on his face, he know what she means by months, and he's clearly listening, so she takes that as permission to go on.

"It was while I was up watching a movie, like this. I wasn't supposed to do it, but I couldn't stand the radio silence anymore."

He keeps his eyes on the screen, but his mouth quirks into a soft smile when he says, "Let me guess. It was -- what do they call it? -- _The Fury of Living_?"

"How did you know?"

"We've seen it together three times. In English, anyway. You get maudlin. I've never understood why."

"It's hard to explain."

"Also hard to explain: the way they translated the title into French."

"I suppose _Le Fureur de Vivre_ does lack the proverbial _je ne sais_ something of _Rebel Without a Cause_."

Now, Peter Lorre is making a deal with Bogie. She's prepared for more quiet viewing, but Reid suddenly turns to face her, moving his whole body, knees pulled up to his chest again and long arms now clutching his legs. He looks right through her for a moment, those sad eyes of his making her heart thump just a little harder in her chest. 

He says, "What you told me the other day, about how you lost six friends…  I don't want to make you feel like crap or anything, but…  I just don't understand it all. It's been brought to my attention that I'm not being particularly objective about--"

"It's okay, Reid. It's--"

"No." He reaches out and, quite unexpectedly, captures her nervous hands between his, holding them tightly and taking a breath before he replies. "No, I want to understand."

She is not an easy person to fluster, but Spencer Reid is one of the few people who can manage it, and without even trying. Now, with his hands trapping hers, she knows she's going to babble a bit, but there's no avoiding it.

"I keep trying to come up with analogies," she says, "and this is the best I can do. So, it's sucks when someone breaks up with you.  I mean, really sucks."

"I'll take your word for it."

"Now, I won't say it's the same level of... pain to be the one doing the heart breaking. But if you really do care about the person you're leaving, it hurts in whole other really crappy ways."

"Guilt."

She nods. "Among other things."

Without taking his eyes off her face, he patiently laces her fingers into his, until their hands are settled together, like he's holding on for dear life. His long thin fingers are cool to the touch, but his palms are warm.

She watches his adam's apple as he swallows hard and adds, "Times six."

She holds her face tight against the threat of tears. She's glad that her voice holds when she laughs bitterly and replies, "Oh, at least."

Instead of pressing on with his line of questions, he nudges at her shoulder, and she realizes he's trying to turn her so she can fit back against his chest. The two of them are soon jammed back against the armrest, as though this isn't in the slightest out of the ordinary. Luckily, she doesn't have time to do too much overthinking because something on the screen draws her attention.

"Ilsa," she says, and they both stop and stare, silent for a long moment.

He murmurs, "What does it always seem like forever before she finally shows up?"

"Anticipation, Reid," she replies, struggling to maintain their usual banter now that his hands are crossed over her abdomen, the heat of his chest and stomach against her back.

Then he begins to discourse at alarming speed on the various techniques of narrative anticipation, complete with academic sources, and before she knows it, Sam is silently playing "As Time Goes By" again. And this is exactly how this works. Again.

*

When they finally lapse into another long silence, it's comfortable. It's not quite like it was before she was gone, though. She's hyper aware of everything, from the feel of his thighs bracketing her hips to the heavy warmth of his arms around her waist. He's a bit more substantial than she might've thought.

It's funny, but she still sometimes has to remind herself that he's a ridiculously strong person, in his own way, and it goes beyond his formidable mind. She's heard people call him immature and heard him call himself asocial, but that will never convince her he isn't one of the kindest people she knows. That sort of kindness doesn’t come cheaply for a man like him.

She's watched him wiggle and fidget for literally years now without properly understanding how much tension he carries in his body. Or maybe it's just that she's in his arms. He's not really used to this, to touching and being touched so much. She finds her fingers tracing paths up and down his forearm. Softly, he kisses the back of her neck and says, quietly:

"You know what I missed?"

It's a struggle not to give way to a full body shiver as the hair on the back of her neck stands up. It's all she can do to say, "Hmm?"

"When you were gone, I mean. I found myself avoiding old movies, especially black and white ones."

"I'm sorry."

"I'm not telling you so you can be sorry. I just find it curious. Not the not watching old movies, really, but the fact that I thought about you when I was watching other movies, ones we've never seen together."

"Like what?"

"Most recently, _2001: A Space Odyssey_."

"God, I hate that movie."

He maneuvers around so he can look her in the eyes again, his own eyebrows raised. "How can you hate _2001_?"

"Very easily. The book was dry as dust and--"

"Says the woman who loves Tolkien."

"You love Tolkien."

"I don't mind cerebral."

"Well, I don't either. But there's cerebral, then there's Kubrick."

"I've always thought of him as a very visually and narratively intriguing artist."

"And I've always thought of that movie as the perfect thing to fall asleep to."

His chest heaves in a giggle. "Anyway," he murmurs, "I just meant to say it was odd how I missed your company doing things we never did together."

"Doesn't seem that weird to me. Every time I went to the Musée d'Orsay, I kept turning around to find you so I could see what you thought about what I was looking at."

"You hate traveling by yourself."

"Not always, but then, yeah. Wasn't traveling, really."

"I'm sorry."

While it's nice to have the people around her begin to see the situation from her perspective, to get over their hurt well enough to realize she was hurting, too, it's still exhausting.

She says, "Do you think…we could call a moratorium on apologies?"

"Sounds reasonable."

"Good."

"I suppose it's better to commiserate over missed opportunities than…"

"Yeah."

After a moment, she turns sideways in his arms so that her legs stretch out over his and her head is against his chest. As she listens to heart beating, she thinks, _Doors, where my heart was used to beat…_

"Reid," she murmurs, "you ever read Tennyson?"

"Been years," he replies, then, suddenly, he nearly knocks her off his lap as he grabs for the remote. "Hey. It's time."

The Germans are singing.

Her favorite thing about this part of the movie, aside from the poignancy of the moment, is listening to Reid's peculiarly accented French as the two of them sing along with the counter-melody. Probably, he learned the language out of a book, memorized its rules without learning its nuances. It's pretty charming anyway.

When it's over, and he's put the TV back on mute, he says, "It never seems to disturb you how bloody that song is."

"Does it disturb you that our national anthem has so many explosions?"

"Point taken."

"Anyway, it's a good thing most people don't speak German well enough to know how much more civilized 'Die Wacht' is."

A smile curving his lips, he half squawks, "I cannot believe you're siding with the Germans."

"I'm just saying, _Dear fatherland, rest your mind_."

"And, hey, I didn't know you knew that much German."

"I had a lot of time on my hands this past few months."

He just nods and trains his eyes on the movie again, and, suddenly, his hands lose their easy flutter over her back. They clamp on and don't move, like he's holding on for dear life. Rick and Ilsa are in Paris, and she wants to cry.  

*

After they watch in silence for a little while longer, a palpable quiet that makes her all too aware of things like the infrequent traffic on the road outside and her pulse roaring in her ears, she realizes she's starting to feel a bit suffocated. In the bathroom, she uses the toilet and then stands at the sink, washing her hands for a bit too long. The cold water is somehow calming, but looking at her face in the mirror is hard.

When she comes back into the room, she's not sure where to sit, how to climb back into his arms, so she doesn't. He lets her settle in on the couch beside him.

She thinks he's watching the movie pretty intently, but a couple of minutes later, she glances at him out of the corner of her eye -- that's all she dares -- and realizes he's lost inside his own head. He looks almost sick.

"You okay, Reid?"

Immediately, but offhandedly, he replies, "I thought of you as Prentiss, you know. This last few months. It was easier that way."

"Okay."

"I mean, you call me Reid, and that's fine. You could call me Spencer if you wanted.  Or not. I've always called you Emily, but it was a little hard to do that when you were dead."

"Reid. Spencer."

He shakes his head and takes a deep breath, finally looking at her again.

"I'm sorry," he says. "I swear I'm not trying to be morose. You know my brain doesn't have an off switch."

"Oh."

"I was thinking about before, when you asked me about Tennyson."

"Just curious."

"No, you weren't. You were thinking of _In Memoriam_ , all death and separation. I wish I'd thought of it back when…"

She reaches out for his hand, and she's surprised to find it shaking.

"Not all of it's mopey. There's the stuff about coming through to the other side. Like the one about the new year. _Ring out, wild bells, against the sky_."

" _Ring out the grief that saps the mind, for those that here we see no more_."

She just nods.

"I know I've asked you this before," she says after a moment, turning back to the movie like this is any night, any time they've shared a couch and a talk and a screen full of plucky starlets and brooding heroes. "But I don't think I've gotten a straight answer. How do you cope with having an eidetic memory?"

"How do you cope with not having one? I don't know."

She tries out her best Bogie impression, grinning as she barks out, " _Last night, we said a great many things. You said I was to do the thinking for both of us_."

He doesn't bother with the voice, but he instantly comes back with, " _Well, I've done a lot of it since then and it all adds up to one thing_."

He opens his mouth to continue speaking, but he stops. Then he grins.

"Hmm?" she says.

"You know, just because I remember things doesn't mean my brain won't sometimes try to turn you into Scarlett O'Hara."

"What?"

"Things are sometimes absurd in my head, especially when I'm tired. I know one thing from another, but they like to combine themselves in weird ways, like they're scrambled. Things that should follow but don’t. Even though they really, really do."

"Help a girl out here, Reid."

" _Casablanca_ , for some reason intruded upon by _Gone with the Wind_. It all adds up to one thing. Which is not at all, _You should be kissed and often, and by someone who knows how_."

She raises her eyebrows, which hopefully distracts from the blush she can feel heating her face.

He says, "Freudian slip, I suppose."

"Only if you don't mean it."

"Oh, I'm pretty sure I mean it. I mean, not that I'm Rhett Butler, but yeah."

"Good," she says, taking his hand again.

"Is that…?"  He frowns, and she can see the wheels turning.

"Is that what?"

"I didn't know if…"

"No. Or yes. Whatever you're worried about, it's not a problem."

"Okay," he says, nodding, serious.

She smiles. "Okay?"

He smiles, too. "Good."

His hands are on her neck before their lips meet, but by the time she's turning her head and really opening her mouth to his, his fingers have slid up into her hair, and they stay tangled there as his mouth softly but a little desperately explores hers. When he pulls back, his lips are red and his face is flushed and he looks every bit of ten years younger than her. But he doesn't seem like a kid. Perhaps in some ways he never has.

When she was away from them, she knew there was little chance she'd ever see them again. If they were writing her obituary, she was writing theirs, too, at least as far as memories go. Every one of them went through something with her, something singular and unforgettable, including Reid. The funny thing about Reid, though, was how many very ordinary things were on that list. But still singular, because Reid was like no one else she'd ever known.

They kiss until the tension begins to demand something more. Whatever it is, they aren't ready for it, not tonight. After giving a last, playful nip at her bottom lip, he lays his head back against the arm of the sofa, closing his eyes and smiling. Since his hands are still on her waist, she rests her head on his chest and closes her eyes, too. The last thing she sees is the screen, with Rick's car pulling up to the airport. Good, she thinks. She can imagine things ending the way she wants them to.

*

When she opens her eyes again, she's disoriented just for a moment, then more disoriented still to find herself breathing in the scent of Reid's deodorant and feeling his chest rise and fall. The clock tells her she's been asleep for about an hour.

She's sort of reluctant to wake him. She'd happily lie here and watch him sleep for a while, but she can already feel her back muscles protesting from the ridiculous position they're in. And, if she's honest with herself, the blank look on his face for no good reason reminds her entirely too much like the one he wore when she first came back, an effort at seeming unbothered that did nothing so much as scream out how very bothered he was.

She shakes her head, and that's when she realizes he's awake, too, because his eyes slip open. There's an eighties action movie on the TV now, and as they struggle to sit up, he turns the set off.

For a long minute, he studies her face, really looks at her. She knows her eyes are puffy and she didn't have on any makeup to begin with. That actually doesn't bother her so much. It's more that he's looking _into_ her, not as though he's measuring anything, just that he's taking her in, sealing her up in his memory. Maybe like she'll disappear again.

"Reid."

"Yeah?"

It's like she can't stop the words coming out of her mouth, because knowing is the most important thing right now, even if it makes this thing go cold:

"Did you really think about going back on the Dilaudid?"

He raises an eyebrow, looking weary but maybe a tiny bit affronted. "Did you hear us, or did J. J. tell you I said that?"

"Well, you did, didn't you? To hurt her. And it worked."

He closes his eyes, but his face has dropped into something like contrition.

"That's not why I said it," he mutters. "I said it because _I_ was hurt. And, yes, I did think about the pills."

It's so much harder to hear the words for herself, coming out of his mouth.

"Why didn't you?"

He shrugs. "I was afraid you'd haunt me."

"Reid…"

His voice rises: "What do you want me to say, Emily?" Then he takes a deep breath and starts again, more calmly. "There are two kinds of addicts: those who can kick the habit and those who can't. I knew if I started using again, I would be one of those who never could. I knew it would be throwing my life away, and I wasn't willing to do that, no matter how…shitty I felt."

"That's fair."

"And I knew from experience that it wouldn't make any of it go away. It would just, you know, hold it down for a while. Eventually, it would get loose."

"I'm sorry."

"And I'm sorry I was a jerk to J. J. Which I've already told her, by the way. And here we are, already breaking the moratorium on sorries."

"We suck at moratoriums."

"Yep."

She wraps her arms around him and so quickly his arms find all the lines of her shoulders and the curve of her lower back, and he plants a kiss on her neck, soft but conspicuous.

"For the record," she murmurs, "I totally would have haunted you."

He grins against her skin. "Good to know."

After she pulls back, he sighs and says, "Okay, so this is absurd. We're clearly exhausted, and there's no reason we have to attempt to sleep stacked on top of each other on the couch like fossil strata when there's an alternative down the hall."

With a mischievous grin lighting her face, she says, "Dr. Reid, are you saying you want to take me to bed?"

"If it's that much of a surprise," he says, "I'm a lot more subtle than I thought."

"Well, that doesn't seem very likely," she replies with a smirk. "But you must be, because I was never, ever sure."

He shakes his head, says, "I wasn't, either. Not for a long time."

He picks up her hand and kisses the back of it, then he says, "Okay, up," poking her in the ribs.

After climbing off him in admittedly precarious fashion, she stands and holds out her hands to him. 

"And, yes," he says as he lets her pull him to his feet, "I do want to take you to bed."

She raises her eyebrows.

He rolls his eyes and says, "Of course, right now, the agenda is filled with sleeping and then probably some more sleeping. Except my left foot, which really, really needs to wake up."

With one hand on her shoulder, he stands there for a minute, knocking his foot against the bottom of the couch a couple of times and wincing.

She says, "And breakfast in there somewhere, maybe?"

"I'm sure we can work that in," he replies.

"Assuming there's not a case."

"Hoping," he says with a smile, then he switches off the overhead lights and shuffles out of the living room, glancing back to make sure she's following.


End file.
